Welcome to an automated society.
Automation refers to processes that are performed without human intervention or assistance. With digital technology, the speed and reach of automation is now increasing rapidly. It may already be common in workplaces, but what will happen when all of society is automated? Will a life made up of more automated processes still feel human? And what will our place as individuals be when everything is smarter, more exact and logical?
As digital technology spreads throughout society, all these hopes and fears simultaneously filter through consumers’ minds.
Here are 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2019:
- Awareables
- Smart quarrels
- Spying apps
- Enforced agreement
- Internet of skills
- Zero-touch consumption
- Mental obesity
- Eco me
- My digital twin
- 5G automates society
Trend 1: Awareables
Your devices will soon know you better than you know your devices.
Your smartphone is likely to contain more sensors than anything else in your home. Yet advanced technology such as face recognition is only used for seemingly simple things, such as unlocking your phone.
But what about when your smartphone becomes fully aware of you; not only of what you do, but of who you are? Today, AI can already understand your personality just by looking into your eyes or by hearing your voice.
Trend 2: Smart quarrels
Virtual assistants might argue just like family members do.
Family life can often include bickering and trivial quarrels over differing opinions, and this could extend to the behavior of virtual assistants.
What will happen when we let different types of virtual assistants, such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and others, into various devices in our homes?
Trend 3: Spying apps
Many feel that the apps they use are constantly spying on them.
It is not uncommon to hear people describe a situation where they have been talking about a certain product only to be confronted by related advertising. Although there is little concrete evidence that apps listen in to your conversations, you may have experienced something similar.
As a result, the feeling of having someone constantly looking over your shoulder is becoming almost impossible to shake off.
Trend 4: Enforced agreement
With an increasing number of websites wanting to collect our information, browsing the internet has turned into a real chore. Although the EU initiative to protect user data and integrity has consumer benefit in mind, it has set off a global epidemic of companies trying to get consumers to sign away their rights to personal data.
The result of this is consumer fatigue.
Trend 5: Internet of skills
Using AR/VR to structure reality will let us instantly master almost anything.
The internet is about to literally step into the physical world, and help us fix that broken chair, even if we have never used a hammer before. Or help us cook the best food imaginable even if we normally fail with instant noodles. Imagine a YouTube video that interactively personalizes instructions to help you do something you have never tried before.
But AR and VR offer possibilities far beyond that. With instructions that adapt digitally to any task at hand soon to be available on demand, we will likely see the creation of a whole internet of skills.
Trend 6: Zero-touch consumption
Virtual assistant users would like to fully automate many boring aspects of consumption.
Shopping can be aspirational, social and fun. It can also be an everyday chore that has to be done – or there won’t be anything in the fridge to cook for dinner.
People are increasingly expecting new technology to automate the boring elements of life, and in the process, hopefully allow us to spend more time on interesting things.
Trend 7: Mental obesity
Automation of decisions could make us mentally lazy.
Today’s screen age has made us lazy as we aren’t required to move. Anything we want is just a click or a swipe away, and many of us exercise our bodies less than we need. But we may be on the cusp of this laziness spreading to our minds too. With digital decision support in increasingly more areas of everyday life, one-third of consumers think virtual assistants will make people forget how to make their own decisions.
Trend 8: Eco me
Self-knowledge now means minimizing your environmental impact.
The idea of monitoring your vitals has been in the public eye ever since smartphones went mainstream. But when the first generation of wearables did not live up to high consumer expectations, the interest in self-quantification also took a hit. Now wearable technology has matured and interest is returning, albeit with a twist. Wellbeing today is as much about CO2 as it is about calories.
People are increasingly connecting their own health to a healthy environment.
However, awareness is one thing and acting on it is something else. This is where automation comes in. For example with a virtual assistant that environmentally optimizes indoor temperature and water use.
Trend 9: My digital twin
Being in two places simultaneously might sound like magic, but in reality, we already are – often on a daily basis. Even when making a simple phone call, we are physically in one place and yet are mentally engaged in a conversation taking place somewhere in the ether. This also goes for many situations on the internet, such as in a chat or game.
But with avatars becoming increasingly realistic, it may become difficult for others to judge if we are in a certain place or not.
It might be a long time until avatars become our true digital twins. But it is a direction we might end up going in. Customer service and support functions will eventually use only avatars instead of people – an area that today is already highly focused on automation.
Trend 10: 5G automates society
Smartphone users globally expect 5G to have a big impact on societal internet infrastructures.
Smartphone users have high expectations of 5G to mobilize and automate many areas of everyday life. While they see communication benefitting most from upgraded mobile networks, they also believe that 5G will support automation in a variety of ways.
They predict 5G will better enable home alarms and believe it will benefit self-driving cars too. Some see a long list of IoT devices made more useful and automated by 5G including electricity, gas and water meters, as well as refrigerators, stoves and washing machines.
Read the full report from Ericsson here.